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Is TripAdvisor finally ready to make a move for wildlife?

17 June 2016

After a year of asking, and over 330,000 people demanding action, we finally got to meet with TripAdvisor last week. We discussed how they can help protect wild animals being abused in the tourism industry.

‘Commitment to explore’

TripAdvisor said they are “committed to exploring this [issue] in a thoughtful and responsible manner to protect animal welfare”. They’re setting up a working group to do this.

This is progress. Of course, it’s only a tentative, baby step, but it’s a step in the right direction and we welcome it. We’ve agreed to share information about the cruelties of wildlife entertainment, and examples of good wildlife tourist experiences, such as the Romanian bear sanctuary we fund and work with, as featured in our Checking out of cruelty report.

We’ve also offered our animal welfare expertise to support their working group in figuring out how they can protect wild animals, and to help them develop a WildlifeLeaders scheme, similar to their GreenLeaders scheme that awards accommodation companies that have proved to be eco-friendly.

TripAdvisor’s ‘commitment to explore’ is not a commitment to any specific actions for wild animals. The company continues to promote and profit from cruel wildlife entertainment and has not made promises to take concrete steps to protect wild animals.

This is despite having the evidence and information that we have provided them with and the hundreds of thousands of people across the world expressing their disapproval of TripAdvisor’s practices by signing our petition calling on them to act.

At the meeting TripAdvisor was not prepared to commit to a timeline for its review and even said it could take years.

We cannot stand by and see thousands more wild animals suffer and die whilst TripAdvisor ‘explore’ this issue. Therefore, we’d ask you to continue to support this campaign. You can help hold TripAdvisor to account for its business practices that promote and profit from wild animal abuse by doing two things:

Sign and share our petition with as many friends, colleagues, family members – anyone you know – telling them why it’s important to you, and asking them to join the growing movement of over 330,000 people.
Write on TripAdvisor’s social media pages such as Facebook and Twitter, to let them know why they need to show more urgency in protecting wild animals from tourist cruelty.